Month: September 2019

“When we’ve had a relevant client that’s wanted to target Snapchat’s audience with video ads, there have been times this year when they’ve spent up to 35% of their paid-social budget on the app,” said Oliver Booker, head of paid social at Reprise Digital.

At other times this year, Snapchat’s share of those budgets has been slightly lower.

“Snapchat can account for around 10% of a paid-social budget now,” said Richard Burgess, senior account manager at We Are Social. “It’s not a huge proportion of money because paid-social budgets never are. But it does show how Snapchat is starting to encroach on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.”

Most media budgets tend to be split across channels by objectives so the budget for Snapchat would come from Facebook or YouTube since those are the two with the best video options. And with YouTube still being queried on plans by some advertisers due to brand safety concerns, the ephemeral mobile messaging app is starting to look like a good alternative route to the same audiences.

It’s not always been easy to see how ads on Snapchat could be an alternative to those of its largest, most established rivals. Indeed, ads on the mobile messaging app tend to be easily skippable, contributing to low viewability rates. The launch of unskippable ads called Snap Commercials last year, however, has pulled Snapchat’s ad pitch more in line with its competitors. Now, advertisers can pay to get a completed view during Snapchat’s TV-like shows in much the same way they would do if they bought pre-roll ads on Facebook or YouTube. For now at least, there’s also less competition for Snap Commercials in both U.K. and U.S. markets, which means the average cost per completion rate can be as low as one cent, said a senior buyer at a network agency on condition of anonymity.

“Since the launch of commercials, we’ve seen 70% of the impressions served have a completed view,” said the senior buyer. “Snap Commercials could be game-changing for our clients on Snapchat because the skip rates are too high elsewhere in the platform, even when it comes to some of the more popular formats like Stores.”

Keen to sell more unskippable ads, Snapchat has added a direct response layer to what were just six-second ads. At Advertising Week New York yesterday (Sept. 24), the platform revealed that advertisers can now add swipe actions to their commercial campaigns — just like users can do with standard ads on the app. Actions can range from letting users swipe up to access a web page, long-form video or camera attachment.

Plans are already underway to grow the inventory for Snap Commercials, with Snapchat working on content deals to create the shows the ads appear in. Recent deals have covered Saudi Arabia, India and Norway, said David Shaw, head of international product marketing at Snapchat

“A big reason we’re growing budgets is down to the performance advertisers are seeing off the back of low cost per views and efficient cost per thousand for impressions. It’s allowed us to play for budgets where we may not have been able to do in the past,” said Shaw. “Social advertising has been a big poo we’ve pulled ad revenue from, but we’re also starting to see online video buyers become more willing to test Snapchat outside of the paid social space.”

While the popularity of unskippable ads has provided an immediate boost to Snapchat’s commercial goals, there’s still interest in skippable ads. So much so that Snapchat has made them longer. The maximum duration of Snap Ads has been extended from 10 seconds to three minutes, according to the company’s announcement at Advertising Week. Like Snap Commercials did last year, the extended length of Snap Ads makes the appearance of ads closer to how they look on other platforms.

Selling longer ads seems somewhat counterintuitive for a social platform that built its ad business on bite-size, vertical video. Creating suitable ad formats wasn’t cheap, especially when it would involve having to pay for a different edit to what is used on other platforms. Even the prospect of buying cheaper ads on Snapchat compared to elsewhere wasn’t enough to convince advertisers to commit more budget to the app. CPMs across Snapchat vary massively, but ad buyers have seen them as low as £1.50 ($2) in the U.K., compared to the £3.50 ($4) they would expect to pay on Facebook. Selling longer ads lowers the barrier to entry for advertisers.

“It makes sense for Snap to start offering longer video slots as it means their offering becomes more in line with their major competitors,” said James Mortimer, paid-social strategist at iCrossing U.K. “Due to Snap’s unique nature creative typically requires more editing, which we believe is essential for every platform, introducing longer video ads helps erode that need and enables advertisers to repurpose video creative from elsewhere.”

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That’s news you’d assume attendees of Advertising Week would be buzzing about — especially considering the executive shakeup that rocked the company earlier this year. But on Tuesday afternoon those in the lobby and outside waiting for ice cream had yet to hear about it. At least, every attendee I asked, including execs at various major brands and networks, were unaware of the breaking news. “I’ve been listening to sessions on programmatic for the last 10 hours, so I haven’t had a chance to check the news,” said one ad tech exec, who when told of the news added, “It doesn’t surprise me.” Panels aside, one PR exec guessed that the lack of attention might be due to Comscore’s size and focus, “It might just be more niche than you would think.”

DTC on TV
Last year, DTC brand Touch of Modern was spending just $1 million on television. This year, the company increased its TV spend dramatically to $33 million, according to Jo Kinsella, evp and chief revenue officer at TVSquared during the Tuesday panel on DTC brands’ media strategies moving toward TV. DTC brands who’ve fully saturated digital channels are turning to television to keep growing the brand. It’s not simply a move from digital to linear television though. DTC brands are working with companies like Viacom to test out a spend with a network via influencers, experiential or OTT and then, once they see results from that, open to spending on linear channels. For example, Postmates worked with Viacom on an experiential sponsorship of a Good Burger pop-up for the relaunch of All That. From there the company grew its relationship with Viacom, recently buying ads on Comedy Central’s Roast of Alec Baldwin. “Anyone trying to reach 18-34 year-olds has to start thinking like this,” said Karen Phillips, evp of ad solutions at Viacom, adding that even legacy brands are starting to use the DTC approach of multi-touch TV buying. — Kristina Monllos

It’s not Adweek!
Advertising Week is often shortened — much to the chagrin of both the conference organizers as well as a certain trade title — to Adweek. It’s been a “problem,” (a very small one) for a long time, but seems to have come to a head this week. It began Monday, when Advertising Week sent out an email reminding reporters to make sure to call it by its proper name. Reporters and staff at Adweek, meanwhile, have really taken it to heart, with a concerted Twitter offensive reminding everyone that they have nothing at all to do with Advertising Week. — Shareen Pathak

3 questions with beauty influencer Manny Gutierrez, aka Manny MUA
Do brands expect immediate conversion when you feature their products?
If I do a brand partnership, and they’re like, “We didn’t get as many sales as we wanted,” I just say, “You’re not working with me only for potential sales, but you’re using me for the number of eyes I have on me.” If I work with a brand and I show a product, someone in their head may say, “Oh, that looked cool.” Maybe they don’t buy it right away. But then another [influencer] will show the product, and that person may be like, “Oh, shit, Manny liked that, too. Maybe I’ll buy it.” There’s a lot involved with using influencers to sell a product. Even if you don’t get a ton of sales in this one jolt, well, you also got a million eyes on it for potential sales in the future.

Are you sticking to Instagram and YouTube, or are brands now asking you to create unique content for, say, TikTok?
I tend to just stay in my lane. I think the highest converting platforms are Instagram and YouTube, and even Twitter sometimes. But I don’t see TikTok as being a big converting platform just yet. It’s fun and I love watching it, and there are such cute videos, but that tends to be how people see it: just fun, little, cute clips. I think that, business-wise, YouTube and Instagram are more professional and more effective.

What’s the biggest threat to the influencer world?
I can’t imagine influencers ever completely going away, because what else are brands going to do? What — you’re going to do a commercial? Girl. That doesn’t always work. You want to have more than just that. –Jill Manoff

Overheard
TikTok put together a wall of iPads to display the variety of content — from beauty influencers to dog enthusiasts to dancers — on the platform at Advertising Week. The point, of course, is to educate the marketers who may still be unaware of the platform like one OTT exec who saw the setup and asked, “OK, what’s TikTok?” 

Coming Up
9 a.m. DTC herald a new era of performance marketing and customer acquisition, Ad Shapers Stage

10:30 a.m. Rethinking TV: Driving growth, relationships and experiences through data, Story Crafters Stage

11:30 a.m. The Future of Retail with Hasbro, Panera, Iris Nova and more, New Gen Stage

12:45 p.m. Gen Z Disruption: Why most of what you know about Gen Z influence is wrong, Culture Builders Stage

2:30 p.m. The pro’s guide to TikTok, Story Crafters Stage

4 p.m. How OG brands deliver DTC results, Ad Shapers Stage

The post Advertising Week Briefing: Comscore gets charged with fraud, DTC learns about TV appeared first on Digiday.